May 16 2005

This morning, IBM has unveiled a big internal
initiative around blogging. While there are already hundreds of IBMers
blogging, both on the internet as well as IBM's internal w3, today's announcement
is designed to take that effort to the next level. From Christopher
Barger's internal announcement:

We're not here to tell
you what to say -- that's up to you.... But one of the benefits of being
part of a vast enterprise like IBM is that no matter what you're doing,
you're not just out there on your own. We are here to provide you news
and information...connections to other bloggers...help and ideas...and
guest posts from leading industry bloggers. We're trying to make blogging
easier for you, should you decide to enter this new and exciting space.

Unsurprisingly,
I've been part of the scene leading up to today's effort. I can't
claim any major credit, though I did participate in the wiki that was used
to create the blogging guidelines. My main contact has been David
Berger, a progressive and visionary guy in IBM's corporate communications
team. David's been able to provide me some good advice and insight
in the last six months or so, and I'm pleased to see his passion and evangelism
come out in a big way.

I suspect that for most readers, this policy/guidelines document will be
quite a surprise. While of course it had input from many parts of
the IBM organization, it's written in humanistic and real-world -- read:
not bureaucratic -- terms. It recognizes the value of individual
voices, yet the reality of where those voices originate. It provides
a mechanism for IBM to protect its overall market messages -- yet also
provides aircover for IBMers who speak out.

Some of the specific points in the guidelines that are important to me
personally, based on the experience of 2½ years blogging and much longer
as a public IBM/Lotus spokesperson:

"We believe in transparency
and honesty."

"[B]ring your own personality to
the forefront; say what is on your mind."

"The most successful bloggers are
those who pay attention to what others are saying about the topic they
want to write about, and generously reference and link to them."

"When you see misrepresentations
made about IBM in the media, by analysts or by other bloggers, you may
certainly use your blog -- or join someone else's -- to point that out.
Always do so with respect and with the facts. Also, if you speak about
a competitor, you must make sure that what you say is factual and that
it does not disparage the competitor."

"If you make an error, be upfront
about your mistake and correct it quickly."

One of the other cool features on IBM's intranet today is an interview
with our own "A-list" bloggers -- Sam
Ruby, Grady
Booch, Bob
Sutor, Catherine
Helzerman, and myself.
We were each asked about why we blog, advice for other IBMers, and tips
on blogs that we read. Ultimately, I explained how y'all are my motivation
for doing this:

As a sales/marketing leader, being able
to have an intimate one-to-one relationship with thousands of customers
who buy/deploy/manage the product I sell is immensely rewarding.

One
last bit, there are already several IBM bloggers on my blogroll (under
"colleagues") already. You should check them out. While
they vary in the amount of IBM-related topics covered on their sites, they
are all part of the conversation already. I expect I'll be adding
a number of additional links to that part of the blogroll in the coming
months.

I do believe IBM is a very honest company but my recent experience leads me to believe they have a long way to go before they become transparent. For "A-list"ers who report on the world from the stratosphere there may well be real transparency into IBM strategy but for the grunts in the trenches, I really doubt transparency into their world would be allowed.

@5 - I think that anything that raises awareness of a technology trend to 300,000 people is a good thing. As bloggers, we might think that blogging is mainstream, and with almost 10 million blogs online today, maybe that's true. Still, a lot of people don't know much about it, or might have had concerns about blogging within the context of their IBM responsibilities.

@5 - "We" is sitll not everyone. I think that anything that raises awareness of a technology trend to 300,000 people is a good thing. As bloggers, we might think that blogging is mainstream, and with almost 10 million blogs online today, maybe that's true. Still, a lot of people don't know much about it, or might have had concerns about blogging within the context of their IBM responsibilities.

@6 Thats a good question. So I had a look and there are no formal guidelines. Just 'Be Smart' is one quote I saw. Personally I hope we never have formal guidelines, and isn't this covered in spirit at the very least by general company guidelines.